| 145 their power to assist him in getting redress. His story was pathetic in the extreme, and although we can not give it as he did, we here relate its substance. He stated that for years he and his ancestors have been located on the land they now occupy, that his people have cultivated it for their living, and they have repeatedly been assured by Indian commissioners that they were secure in their possession of it, and that it would be set apart for them. A reservation has lately been set apart for them in another part of the valley, but upon it there is not a drop of water and nothing will grow to sustain life, the only vegetation to be found upon it being a scrubby brush. The lands they have heretofore occupied and cultivated have been surveyed and opened to preëmption, and already white men are squatting upon them, driving the Indians away, and forcing them to abandon their growing crops, upon which they are dependent for their living. The old man complained bitterly of the fact that the squatters were even plowing up the bones of his deceased relatives and ancestors. He then rehearsed the number of good services he had performed for the whites, the culprits he had brought to justice, and stated that whenever a member of his own tribe, or any one within his reach, had committed any depredations, he had invariably delivered him up to the proper authorities or dealt out summary justice to him with his own hand; that for all these services he had never demanded or received from the Government any remuneration whatever; that he respects the Government and will obey it, and, while he can not believe it will drive him from his home, his farms, and the graves of his people, still, if it is the case, he ,will acquiesce in it and go out upon the desert, although he knows that starvation awaits him. For himself, he says he is old and nearly blind, and to drive him away will be hard indeed. He has ever been friendly to the whites; has rendered them innumerable good services, and does not intend to allow this new outrage upon him to alter his friendship for the whites; he believes that the movement is being done through ignorance on the part of the authorities at Washington, and makes this appeal to the people of San Bernardino County that they may send a remonstrance to the proper quarter, and if it is then determined that he is to quit he will go out upon the desert and die."
The Irish World calls it "unmanly cant" to talk of the Custer massacre, because "there was no massacre at all. Both General Custer and Sitting Bull meant war, and the former made the attack, hoping to kill, wound, or capture not only Sitting Bull, but also his entire tribe. But war is a game it takes two to play, and it happened that General Custer was whipped. But it won't do to say that, so we must insist that it was a massacre. Had Sitting Bull been 'massacred,' it would have been a ' brilliant victory,' and his unpardonable crime was in not letting himself get killed. The simple fact that he stood between his people and extermination is, to many persons, ample proof that he is a savage. A hundred years ago the King of England employed the red man and the Hessian to murder Americans for the crime of defending their homes."
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